Greg Detre
Tuesday, 16 January, 2001
Dr Rosen, post-Kantian I
Nietzsche appears to flit from one subject, style, interlocutor and mood to another, writing in sometimes darting, swooping or measured tones. The reader is forced to pursue each of the recurring, interwoven themes at intervals. This could be a stylistic device to dissuade those who might misunderstand or misrepresent his thought, to elude academics who would codify and ossify his call to action or merely a symptom of his peripatetic writings. Perhaps most of all though, it forces the reader to piece the ideas together, to ruminate and so immerse oneself in the ideas. But this is difficult. After a stretch of cogent, scholarly analysis, one finds oneself faced with a sprinkling of maxims, some wise, some incomprehensible, and some seeming at odds or alien in relation to other aspects of his thought. And underlying everything, the references to truth and interpretation seem to be � undermining everything.
Often, a parallel is drawn between Nietzsche and later Wittgenstein in their use of unconventional style. In the case of Nietzsche, he is more like a �courtroom lawyer� than a meticulous analytic philosopher. Though indeed sometimes he utilises detached, deft cuts of precision and insight, he sinks to ad hominem attacks and flights of figurative, metaphorical and often incomprehensible purple prose, dashing wild sweeps of rhetoric, where the force and power of the writing replaces careful, evidenced argument. Wittgenstein�s later writings (e.g. Philosophical Investigations) depart markedly from his earlier considered painstaking procedure (e.g. Tractatus) for a reason � Wittgenstein preferred to consider in detail a multitude of real world snippets, building up an alternative picture of things by slowly undermining the way we usually see them, whose overall effect cannot be produced by argument.
Why then, does Nietzsche write as he does? He eschews the usual form of reasoned, step-by-step argument because he did not seek the readership of the �philosophical labourers� � in fact, the vicious personal attacks may have been included to discourage such readers. Rather, his purpose is to excite as well as to educate. It was to the philosophers of the future that he wrote, even though he knew none. But as well, his style of writing was meant to illustrate a new type of philosophising. Rather than analysing the current state of affairs, determining what intepretations have been and are being made and what values pertain to what, it is the business of the �new philosophers�, the �attempters�, to create their own interpretations and value systems, exploding the systems of today. They are legislators, not merely analysers. This is why philosophy must be �experimental�, not in the sense of being empirical, but in terms of continually revising, creating and experimenting with new interpretations and valuations. Indeed, the task of these new, true philosophers is the very hardest of all, that of escaping from the restraints, practises, values and interpretations of their day, for we are all �children of our time� - stepping outside one�s today is the difficult business of philosophy.
More importantly still than points of style, Nietzsche is often accused of being self-contradictory. It is easy to find places and themes where his attitude and arguments resist harmonisation. His discussions of truth itself provide many such examples: �Truths are illusions, of which one has forgotten this is so� (TL); �There are many kinds of eyes � and consequently there are many kinds of �truths�, and consequently there is no truth� (WP 540); and yet also �At every step one has to wrestle for truth; one has had to surrender for it almost everything to which the heart, to which our love, our trust in life, cling otherwise. That requires greatness of soul: the service of truth is the hardest service� (A 50). We see dismissal, relativisation and devotion to truth all represented here. Which is it to be?
Schacht proposes that Nietzsche�s use of the word �truth� is so confusing is partly because he uses the one word in many senses, both common and technical. The first sense that springs to my mind when reading his text is that of metaphysical Truth � this predilection among philosophers to assume that our world is a world of appearances, a veil for an underlying reality, has pervaded the work of thinkers from Plato to Kant. This �dogmatism� is rejected out of hand as an example of philosophers� �evaluative prejudices with respect to various features of human existence and experience� (Schacht, 1983), including �appearance, change, pain, death, the corporeal, the senses, fate and bondage, the aimless� (WP 407). When one ceases to desire truth as consolation and accepts truth, �even plain, harsh, ugly, repellent, unchristian, immoral� truth (GM I:1), this world is revealed not as appearance but as is. Thus, his normative (usually moral) truths are true in the sense that they are interpretations of our human, all too human condition. These �truths� could perhaps otherwise be rendered �understanding� or �wisdom�. In the same way that two proverbs may appear irreconcilable, without detracting from either�s worth (�Ignorance is bliss�; �The unexamined life is not worth living�), such interpretive �truths� need to be held together.
The apparent incoherence of Nietzsche�s mode of presentation and writing focuses the reader on the �perspectivism� that such a subjective view of truth gives rise to. When truth is always interpretation, as viewed through our physiology, environs and nature, then we can see objectivity in the sense of a passive, omnidirectional, disembodied eye roving the universe as impossible. Instead, we can approach it with layers and reflections of interpretations upon interpretations, each one adding dimension to the last, and building up a meta-perspective in some way. Perhaps then, an acknowledged, informed perspectivism can be �truer� and more objective than a single, deep, entrenched and rich paradigm. For if subjectivity is being tied to a single perspective, objectivity must surely be a measure of how many distant and different perspectives you can hold. But this is even further into the future of philosophy.
This way, we can answer Douglas Smith�s objection that by saying, �There is no truth, is that not too a truth?�, Smith points to the infinite regression and paradox inherent in a Nietzschean view of truth and interpretation. Nietzsche�s interpretation of interpretations as violent and dishonest seems to be turning upon itself. When we see his ambivalence in terms of different types of truth and ways of searching for it, science and the ascetic ideal as contrasted with experimental philosophy, Nietzsche never espouses an absolute Truth but rather substitutes a web of truths and gaps.
Nietzsche is able to talk of there being no truth, creating it and also searching for it because he is first contending the notion that there is a �reality� underlying our world of appearances, demanding that we must interpret this world we live in in order to live in it. He is not searching for the absolute, single answer in the way that science or philosophy usually do � rather, truth is a woman, and must be won, though maybe never possessed.